WUWT readers may recall our guest post from Russ Steele in 2009: CA Academy of Science AGW display apparently not very popular
Here are a couple of photos from his visit then:
That’s one big hockey stick they got there – click to enlarge
He wrote then:
For the most part these displays were ignored, except for a few casual observers seeking refuge from the long lines at the real science displays. This lack of interest and participation seems to reflect the recent Gallup Polls indicating people are not really concerned about global warming, or ocean warming either. It could be our children have caught on to the scam, or they have reached global warming overload for the school lessons, and want some real science for change of pace.
I visited the CAS for the very first time on Saturday with my children, and I’m pleased to report that the exhibit is now in pieces on the floor, and cordoned off from the general public. I asked a museum docent “why is the global warming exhibit in the museum brochure (showing her mine) but closed off?”
Her response was priceless:
People just weren’t warming up to the exhibit. We are doing a new one on Earthquakes opening soon.
Russ Steele was right.
Maybe it had to do with the message. For example, this bit of ridiculous propaganda in the original exhibit:
Image from “In my Copious Free Time“
Or maybe the fact that people didn’t like being lectured on what to eat, especially when the exhibit was in full view of the museum’s Academy Cafe:
Image above from Wandering Architect.
The “Carbon Cafe” is in shambles now, as is the “green building” portion of the exhibit, click to enlarge:
Here are more views of the dismantled exhibit:
In it’s heyday, it looked like this:
Image above from Cinnabar, Inc. details: New Academy of Sciences, Cinnabar’s “Altered State” Exhibits Speak Up about Climate Change and California
The whale skeleton hanging from the ceiling is still there, but everything else is dismantled.
Maybe it was the labeling of California as an “altered state” in their press release for it that did it in. The LA Times said at the opening that it was a Museuem that Shouts Climate Change.
I guess maybe they shouted too loud, because now they plan to exhibit on something that Californians can really relate to:
When the über green California Academy of Sciences pulls the plug, you know “climate change” is a dead issue with the public.
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I’m laughing. It’s probably very wrong of me, but I’m enjoying it. 🙂
Looks like they mixed up the hockey stick (“one big”) with helicopter Ben’s money supply!
When an exhibit has blatantly misrepresented items such as that CO2 graph, it is no wonder people didn’t like it. Anyone with half a brain would be wondering whether the academy thought that the Earth began around 1000 years ago, let alone swallow the “angry beast” simile.
I guess relevance is a relative term. Mother nature is far more interesting than propaganda.
Sign of the times. That ‘Angry Beast’ theme is about as far from science as you can get, except maybe archaeology or paleontology. Think like a Neanderthal kids!
And what’s with the whales? Or did the Great Acidification strip their carcasses to the bone?
The angry beast is Joe Lunchpail and Sally Housecoat who just realized that they’ve been fed a steady diet of propaganda for the last few years.
Has anyone else noticed that the average person no longer believes in AGW? If there’s one thing that the salt of the earth have that the rich don’t is a great b.s. detector – and theirs went off about the same time Al Gore (the inventor of the Internet) started popping up on every board in the country that had a handful of stock options to hand over to him.
Only fly in the ointment I see is that they will likely blame the “Earthquake is coming” on CO2.
I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall at some of their board meetings when they must have surely discussed what a failure the whole exhibit was before deciding to dump it.
People grow tired of the propaganda. It’s no longer ‘cool’ to be green in a ‘climate’ way I guess.
Hahahahahaha! 🙂
Oh Anthony ! you are killing me. Why don’t they have an exhibit on designs for chain mail suits for sea otters ?
Now that would be something I could get my teeth into.
From the 2008 “altered state” manifesto
http://www.calacademy.org/newsroom/releases/2008/altered_state_release.php
“They can videotape themselves making a pledge to reduce their carbon footprints, and then email the video to their friends; submit ideas for alternative energy technologies on a communal bulletin board;”
My idea would be to make anyone suggesting an energy technology personally liable for the subsidies if thinks go wrong and the technology is actually implemented through legislative mistakes.
I saw that exhibit for the first (and apparently the only) time about six months ago. It was a joke. I mean, the climate is a fascinating thing, but they turned it into something dead, dead, dead …
Then they poked it with sticks, and stuck alternately boring and threatening words and boring and threatening pictures up on the wall, deadly dull displays, and hard-to-understand mini-dioramas … the whole thing looked like it had been put together by sixth graders with a minimum of adult help. Inspired, passionate sixth graders, to be sure … but sixth graders nonetheless.
I laughed more in that exhibit than I had in a while, and went off refreshed to see the real science. They have a suggestion box when you leave, or they did then. I blush to remember what I suggested they do with their climate exhibit … and now it seems they have done, if not what I suggested, at least something constructive with it.
w.
PS—How do I know that they didn’t do what I suggested with the exhibits? I don’t really know, but the circumstantial evidence that they turned my idea down lies in the fact that there was no spike in admissions to the hospital Emergency Rooms of Academy of Science employees with proctological complaints …
All that crap is being warehoused next to the “Duck And Cover” exhibit of 1955. They’ll drag it back out in 30 or so years and have a laugh at it too.
That exhibit was vacuous and weak. It used up a large amount of space and was extremely weak in the way it delivered its science. I am pleased to learn that they are replacing that ridiculous “agit-prop” with an exhibit that is at least relevant.
Instead of wasting all that space on the CO2 fiasco, they should have rebuilt the “Life through time” exhibit that was in the old Academy building, which was quite detailed and was a huge hit with the kids, or the fascinating army ants exhibit they had in the temporary location while the new building was being built.
What happened to the archives. I was trying to find a copy of
Prof Davies paper on the cloud levels falling, so I have it before I talk with him about it.
someone got a link to that paper ? please
What’s the betting their new “Earthquakes” exhibit includes
AGW, Climate Change, Climate Extremes,Sustainable Development (the new IPCC mantra) spin and drivel.I don’t see a reference in the other page, but is this the museum that put a lot of money into solar panels and stuff that never quite worked out as well as they hoped?
Yeah, guess so, see http://www.calacademy.org/academy/building/sustainable_design/ – no performance data available from a cursory look.
George E. Smith; says:
February 19, 2012 at 9:59 pm
> …get my teeth into.
Love it!
If they kept it, they would have to change their name to the Calif. Academy of Political Science
Ric Werme says:
February 19, 2012 at 10:14 pm
“Yeah, guess so, see http://www.calacademy.org/academy/building/sustainable_design/ – no performance data available from a cursory look.”
“Surrounding the Living Roof is a large glass canopy with a decorative band of 60,000 photovoltaic cells. These solar panels will generate approximately 213,000 kilowatt-hours of energy per year and provide up to 10% of the Academy’s electricity need. The use of solar power will prevent the release of 405,000 pounds of greenhouse gas emission into the air.”
What is that, a science museum? And they are unwilling to give you a simple value like peak performance, which I estimate at 70 kWpeak from these numbers, or about 12 times the typical homeowner’s installation.
How does science education profit from unclear writing. They could give clear crisp numbers and their fluffy numbers as a bonus on top. They don’t seem to know anything about science.
Sorry to say this but this site and all “climate” sites will go same way as less and less people become interested in the subject as they are now noticing that climate really hasn’t changed and will not in their lifetimes LOL
This is what happens when a display has no “science”. They promised “science”, but didn’t deliver. No surprise the public gave it a negative reception.
So they have given up on unpopular science. The right decision for all the wrong reasons. This attitude to science is why we are in this mess right now.
Well done Russ for Steely eyed reporting and you didn’t even get a grant, silly boy.
What a week Fakegate a shambles and Museumphonypropagandagate taken down by an lack of interest /Earthquake, yes the walls are tumbling in on the warmist.If only more Californians could wake up from the sleep walking and do something concrete to tackle these crazy socialist running the state (mental) government institution!
And a nod of the head to DirkH and his comment to Aaron Huertas of the Union of Concerned Scientist
You are the Author of the letter to Heartland Institute.
DirkH permalink
February 19, 2012
Greetings, Aaron.
I’ve read your letter to the Heartland Institute. You know the one you had Ray, Dave, Mike, John, Ben, Gav and Kev sign.
Why didn’t you sign as well? It would have been honest to see “UCS” on the letter, wouldn’t it?
Or don’t you do honesty?
I’m expecting this comment to never see the light of day, of course.
http://aaronhuertas.com/2011/12/motivated-minority-climate-change-debates-lopsided-and-dangerous/comment-page-1/#comment-8158
maybe they could sell the display to the Australia labor gov,t, they still believe in global warming’ god bless them for they DO not KNOW what they are doing